Man Trap Versus Turnabout Intruder

[Timo]

The term "flagship" has, to the best of my recollection, never been used correctly in canonical Star Trek. It means a vessel -- whether it's a PT boat, a destroyer, a cruiser, a battleship, or an aircraft carrier -- from which a flag officer exercises field command over a group of vessels: an attack force, a battle group, a task force, a convoy, or a fleet. The concept of a flagship appeared many times: Commodore Wesley commanding the attack force to test M5, from the Lexington; Admiral Necheyev aboard Picard's Enterprise; technically, even when Commodore Decker commandeered Kirk's Enterprise. But we never, to the best of my recollection, had a case in which the word and the concept were used together.

Well, in "Descent", Nechayev specifically says she's making the Gorkon "her flagship", marking at least one technically correct usage. Also, in ST:FC, there is background chatter where "flagship" gives orders to the anti-Borg formation at Typhon, and later on at Earth we learn there used to be an "admiral's ship" in the formation until the Borg decided otherwise; another technically correct case, even if split.

I have toured a number of decommissioned naval vessels, among them the battleships USS Missouri, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and USS Iowa, in San Pedro, California, and most frequently, the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, in Alameda. My recollections about the Missouri and the Iowa are a bit fuzzy in this regard, but I know for a fact that the Hornet has a separate "flag bridge," from which an admiral would command a battle group or task force, presumably so that the ship's CO and the admiral would not get in each other's way.

Flag bridges were a feature on many cruiser-sized ships during the Cold War, even though the ones aboard carrier groups would be the best, and used in group actions. Having them aboard battleships went rather out of the fashion in WWII, where it was found that it was hellishly difficult to maintain radio communications from aboard things that went bang hard enough to rattle themselves and their precious aerials to pieces every ten seconds or so; dedicated command ships (converted freighters) were fielded early on in the conflict, to rule over battleships in their primary use in massive shore bombardment ops, whilst fleet actions were largely commanded from aboard fast units or carriers.

That's all for tech reasons, with fragile radio replacing robust signal flags and lamps, and with the distances involved increasing to several miles, basically. I wonder what the situation in Trek would be? They have radio-like comms, but they also have computer control - so it isn't utterly implausible for the skipper of a busy corvette to additionally command a fleet hundreds strong (or at least a significant chunk thereof) with voice commands, as we see with Sisko on the Defiant in "Sacrifice of Angels"... Merely ridiculously implausible!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

Later in the season, Gene Coon would have offered a way to save it. A few lines of dialog and boom, preserved species.

Maybe. But it's interesting to note that in his first version of "Arena" Kirk was still determined to go after the Gorn ship after the Metron test was done, in order to prevent a war, and the Metron was like, "Done," and fucking blew up the ship for Kirk. Roddenberry often told the writers "Kirk wouldn't do that," so some of that could have rubbed off from Gene R. to Gene C. over time.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Yes good point. But Spock immediately argued for not destroying the Gorn vessel. The same pattern was used in "Devil in the Dark."

Spock didn't do that in "The Man Trap." Nobody did, which was my point. In the Coon era SOMEBODY was there in the crew to present the counter point. Whether it was Coon's philosophy, Fontana's or "not John Black" I have no idea...

 

[Timo]

It's hardly consistent, tho - in several episodes ("Balance of Terror", say), Spock is the first to advocate quick and merciless killing, as is only logical.

From the dramatic point of view, that is - somebody has to advocate killing at some point, or alternatively somebody has to kill at some point. Else what good would it do for Kirk or some other hero to abstain, if killing weren't on the table?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

It's hardly consistent, tho - in several episodes ("Balance of Terror", say), Spock is the first to advocate quick and merciless killing, as is only logical.

From the dramatic point of view, that is - somebody has to advocate killing at some point, or alternatively somebody has to kill at some point. Else what good would it do for Kirk or some other hero to abstain, if killing weren't on the table?

Timo Saloniemi

Once again, I was specifically saying LATER in the season, once Gene Coon stepped in a producer, someone most likely would have made the argument. Based on the evidence shown in the episodes he produced.

"Balance of Terror" was not done on his watch.

 

[MAGolding]

You might have wondered why, in my post number 100 on page 5 of this thread

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/man-trap-versus-turnabout-intruder.309135/page-5

I wrote:

What is the size of planet M-113?

The planet Earth is famous for being a planet which is habitable for humans, with an atmosphere which humans can breath. Planet Earth has a mean radius of 6,371.0 kilometers or 3,958.8 miles, and a surface area of 510,065,623 square kilometers or 196,927,438 square miles.

In Habitable Planets for Man, 1964, Stephen H. Dole estimated the required properties for a planet to be habitable for humans.

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf

He decided that a surface gravity of 1.5 g, 1.5 times as strong as Earth's surface gravity, would be the maximum that humans would tolerate.

His calculatins indicated that an Earthlike planet with a surface gravity of 1.5 g would havean escape veloocity of 15.3 kilometers per second and 2.35 times the mass of Earth, and aradius of 1.25 Earth radius. Thus it would have a radius of 7,963.75 kilometers or 4,948.5 miles, and an area of about 796,975,737 squae kilometers, or 307,720,914 square miles.

It is possible that planet M-113 is smaller than the largest possible planet habitable for humans. It might be the size of Earth, which has a mean radius of 6,371.0 kilomters or 3,958.8 miles, and a surface area of 510,065,623 square kilometers or 196,927,438 square miles.

Planet M-113 might be much smaller than Earth, maybe as small as the smallest planet that could possbilbly be habitable for humans.

Dole decided that the smallest planet which could form and retain a breathable atmsophere would have a mass 0.4 of the mass of Earth, a surface gravity of 0.68 g, and a radius 0.78 times the radius of Earth. That wuld be a radius of 4,969.38 kilometers or 3087.864 miles, and thus a surface area of 310,323,225 square kilometers or 111,819,138 square miles.

But Dole selected a mass of 0.40 earth mass rather arbitarily. He used 2 different methods to estimate or calculate the minimum mass of a planet which could form a breathable atmosphere, ad got2 differnt results 0.25 mass Earth and 0.57 mass Earth, and selected 0.40 mass Earth as an approximation.

So some people might imagine that the smallest planet which could retain a breathable atmosphere for about 100,000,000 years might possibly also be able to form such an atmosphere in the first place, despite Dole's doubt that it could.

That would be a radius of 4,013.73 kilometers or 2,494.044 miles, and thus a surface area of 202,444,589 square kilometers or 78,166,035 square miles.

This questina sks about hepossibility of a habitable world having a radius only 0.58 that of the Earth. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com...-be-smaller-than-0-58-earth-radii/41599#41599

And it was decided that it was possible for a planet with a radius of 0.58 the Earth's radius to have sufficient escape velocity to retain a breathable atmsophere if it was made of unusally dense maaterials.

That would be a radius of 3,695.18 kilometers or 2,296.104 miles, and thus a surface area of 171,585,688 square kilometers or 66,251,081.8 square miles.

That answer also considered a hypothetical planet made of the very, ver rare element, Osmium, with a thin surface layer of other materials. If such aplanet had the miniumamount of mass for ahabitable world (though not necessarily for a worl dhabitable for humans) it could have a radius as small as 0.29 that of Earth..

That would be a radius of 1,847.59 kilometers or 1,148.052 miles, and thus a surface area of 42,896,422.1 square kilometers or 16,562,770.5 square miles.

I note that in "That Which Survives" the Kalandan planet has a breathable atmopshere. It is also very unusual.

KIRK: A ghost planet?
SPOCK: I suggest no supernatural explanation, Captain. I merely point out that the facts do not fit any known categories of planets.
KIRK: Let's take the facts one by one. That should explain something.
SPOCK: Undoubtedly. The age of this planet would seem to be only a few thousand years. It would be impossible for vegetation to evolve in so short a period.
KIRK: Its size is approximately that of Earth's moon.
SPOCK: But its mass and atmosphere are similar to Earth.
KIRK: That would be difficult to explain.
SPOCK: It would be impossible, Captain. An atmosphere could not evolve in so short a period of time.
KIRK: And yet it has.
SPOCK: Evidently. But the inconsistencies are so compounded as to present a seemingly impossible phenomenon.

So the planet is approximately the size of Earth's Moon.

The Moon has a radius of 0.2727 of Earth's radius;1.737.4 kilometers or 1,079.6 miles, and thus a surface area of 37,932,328.1 square kilometers or14,645,601.6 square miles.

And Krk and Spock agree that a planet with the size of the Moon and a mass and atmosphere similar to Earth would be impossible. Planet M-113 has been known for years or decades, and it has an atmosphere similar to Earth's, so therefore planet M-113 can not have the diameter of the Moon with the mass of the Earth.

Thus it seems extremely probable that Planet M-1333 has a larger radius than the Moon, though possibly a radius of 1,847.59 kilometers or 1,148.052 miles if it is made almost entirely of osmium, the densest known element.

Planet M-113 would have a surface area of 42,896,422.1 square kilometers or 16,562,770.5 square miles.if it was made of the extremely rare elment osmium.

If it was made out of a very exceptionally dense mixture of the elements that a planet which formed naturally could be made of, planet M-113 could have a surface area as small as 171,585,688 square kilometers or 66,251,081.8 square miles.

With such a vast surface area, and apparently only two perment human residents during the last few years, how could any person, human or native, know that there was one and only one surviving M-113 native?

 

[Neopeius]

With such a vast surface area, and apparently only two perment human residents during the last few years, how could any person, human or native, know that there was one and only one surviving M-113 native?

Ship's sensors can detect life forms from orbit. If a complete survey predated Crater's expedition, they'd know. A survey would have been likely since the Craters were dispatched in the first place.

Now, that invites the question why they didn't know about the salt monster before landing. It may well be that they had record of it but had attached no significance. Once the salt monster killed Nancy, Crater might have gone over the data and found the salt monster in the data set after the fact.

Of course, if he didn't have access to the survey data, or was too lazy/lacked the right skills/lacked a good enough computer to analyze the data, he might have just taken the salt monster's testimony on faith.

 

[Commishsleer]

They both suck.

They do not!
Well maybe Turabout a little.
First scene for example in Man Trap has Kirk in great form. He's beamed down with McCoy probably unnecessarily for a captain. Wouldn't a nurse have been more useful to McCoy for a medical check?
Why did Kirk beam down? To hassle McCoy, to be a supportive friend, because he can? This sets up Kirk's personality for the rest of the series. He;'s different from the hoity-toity Picard, rule following Janeway,
Anyway I thought the episode was good. As for the salt monster. Well there's no doubt he was sentient. I mean maybe when he was acting as Green or the guy who tried to seduce Uhura I could convince myself that it was an animal but when it was Nancy or McCoy it had a well thought-out plan. So McCoy had no choice to save the captain by killing it just if it had been a member of the crew trying to kill the captain. Look if it had gone on-board and they had found it in the lunch-room gorging on tons of replicated salt then there would have been no need to kill it but it didn't. It tried to kill the captain. McCoy only killed it to save Kirk's life.
Turnabout Intruder. There was a lot of good things in this episode but the "no women captains" did leave a sour taste in the mouth at the end of the series. Not because the insane Lester said it but because Kirk didn't deny it.

 

[Timo]

Not contradicting madladies is merely gentlemanly behavior from Kirk.

As for the salt vampire, I don't see any plan unfolding at any point. Or even one in the making. What good did any of the actions of the vampire do to it? Save for instant gratification, that is. It merely went after new prey whenever it could, moving farther and farther away from a stable and safe situation. The only thing Kirk's starship had to offer was more victims. A new chestful of salt tablets was off the table now that the monster chose to infiltrate the ship. Transit to another planet was impossible as long as the creature kept eating people. It didn't even manage to weaken Kirk's ability to respond with deadly force. If sentient or sapient, it was also (and first and foremost) an idiot. Which goes well in hand with it being a last survivor!

I don't believe in detailed planetwide surveys, either. Our heroes always beam down to do spot checks after having missed the blatantly obvious in their orbital scans. The Craters found some ruins sticking out from the stand, possibly ones that had emerged fro said sand after untold millennia while the rest of that civilization remained outside the reach of surveys, and then pitched their tents there and dug in. Beyond the desert might have lived all sorts of creatures of little significance, one of which then did a rare pilgrimage that brought it to contact with a couple of edible bipeds...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Commishsleer]

Not contradicting madladies is merely gentlemanly behavior from Kirk.

As for the salt vampire, I don't see any plan unfolding at any point. Or even one in the making. What good did any of the actions of the vampire do to it? Save for instant gratification, that is. It merely went after new prey whenever it could, moving farther and farther away from a stable and safe situation. The only thing Kirk's starship had to offer was more victims. A new chestful of salt tablets was off the table now that the monster chose to infiltrate the ship. Transit to another planet was impossible as long as the creature kept eating people. It didn't even manage to weaken Kirk's ability to respond with deadly force. If sentient or sapient, it was also (and first and foremost) an idiot. Which goes well in hand with it being a last survivor!

I don't believe in detailed planetwide surveys, either. Our heroes always beam down to do spot checks after having missed the blatantly obvious in their orbital scans. The Craters found some ruins sticking out from the stand, possibly ones that had emerged fro said sand after untold millennia while the rest of that civilization remained outside the reach of surveys, and then pitched their tents there and dug in. Beyond the desert might have lived all sorts of creatures of little significance, one of which then did a rare pilgrimage that brought it to contact with a couple of edible bipeds...

Timo Saloniemi

The salt-vampire was sentient - not smart. I mean killing Kirk is just about the worst thing he could do on a ship with Spock and McCoy on it.

 

[Hofner]

When 6 year old me saw "Man Trap" on Sept. 8 '66, it just blew me away. I can still remember the total mystery of the rings on the dead people's faces.

I was already a big fan of Lost In Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and this new show called "Star Trek" was both figuratively and literally light years ahead of those other shows.

When I first saw Turnabout Intruder", I didn't know it had been the last episode. I just saw it in reruns along with other eps I hadn't seen, I didn't even know it was a third season ep until later.

Because "TI was delayed, I totally missed it. I gather it was supposed to be broadcast the next Friday after "All Our Yesterdays but it was pre empted by news coverage of Eisenhower's death so for me, AOY was the last first run ST episode I saw.

Robert

 

[Commishsleer]

It's hardly consistent, tho - in several episodes ("Balance of Terror", say), Spock is the first to advocate quick and merciless killing, as is only logical.

From the dramatic point of view, that is - somebody has to advocate killing at some point, or alternatively somebody has to kill at some point. Else what good would it do for Kirk or some other hero to abstain, if killing weren't on the table?

Timo Saloniemi

It chained from Spock to Kirk pretty early on which made it difficult.
If Kirk wanted to kill the Cloud creature, Karidean, the Horta then since he was captain it nearly happened.

 

[Timo]

Very true. And in that case, the audience had to suddenly start worrying that the main hero was in the wrong, and then some last-minute event would bring him to his better senses... But it still wasn't a pacifist Spock (he kept on finding ways to fulfill Kirk's bloodlusty orders instead) or a convincingly passionate McCoy (he mainly got to preach to the choir, doing very few "Damnit Jim!" counterattacks when Kirk wanted to kill monsters). Basically, all the three heroes realized that killing was wrong simultaneously - or then all three were fine with it.

In light of that, it's funny that even when McCoy opposed killing in "Man Trap", it was not the real McCoy! The good doctor seems to appreciate the need to seek out and destroy new life and civilizations just like the next officer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

I often think that Turnabout Intruder would have worked better if Lester-Kirk had been less nuts but the crew knows Kirk well enough to spot the holes in her performance. In that respect, I love the character moments with the wider cast in the Man Trap. Watching Chapel interact with Kirk-Lester is so frustrating. He could use specific details about their experiences on Exo-III to gain her trust or she could actually take it upon herself to put her brain in first gear and investigate. You can also see how having Yeoman Rand in the latter episode could have actually made decent use of her character. Actually, I enjoy both episodes but there is a lot more to like in the Man Trap.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Exo 3 was almost three years ago, and while the characters would remember it, that's a long gap for episodic television.

Sulu mentioned the silicon creature from
Janus 6 in "That Which Survives" which was a good gap of time. So, they did already set the precedent.

Kirk as Janice didn't have to talk about anything so far back. Just mentioning a few choice details from earlier in the season would have worked as he did with Spock.

 

[Pauln6]

Exo 3 was almost three years ago, and while the characters would remember it, that's a long gap for episodic television.

After one of the yeomans bought it in season two, they never beamed down again. Probably actually due to budget cuts. But since Spock would simply confirm anything they recorded, TOS yeomans are operationally useless.

It was unusual but they did occasionally mention previous plot points in TOS. Perhaps trickier with Chapel as he would have to refer to some very specific elements of their conversations that would not be obvious from the official log entries.

I never really understood why Yeomen beamed down on exploration missions, but they do make sense on diplomatic missions. That apart, I was thinking more of the yeoman encountering Lester-Kirk on the ship and adding her concerns to the other characters. Maybe a simple mistake like putting sweetener in his coffee. The main problem would be having two Janices in the same episode but there were other yeomen too. An in-joke could have been Kirk calling his yeoman by the name of a previous yeoman. Can you imagine the look Rand would have given him if he'd called her Yeoman Barrows?

 

[GNDN18]

Name’s “Smith,” sir.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Watching Chapel interact with Kirk-Lester is so frustrating. He could use specific details about their experiences on Exo-II to gain her trust or she could actually take it upon herself to put her brain in first gear and investigate.

That's what I've always thought about the hearing. Spock could have said, "The department heads had a working breakfast on Tuesday. Sir, if you really are the Captain, can you tell us who spilled a cup of coffee?" And then just stare expectantly at fake Kirk.

Right there, the plot-extending "stupid spell" would be broken. Fake Kirk would cling to power, muster support among the uninformed crew, while Spock and Scotty would have to mount a mutiny for real.

A similar solution would have served Spock in "Whom Gods Destroy." The trouble there is, how many times can such an unlikely situation happen to the same group of people? Using the same trick twice would shine an unwanted light on it.

"What are Little Girls Made Of" had a wonderful and to my knowledge original take on the age-old problem of spotting imposter Kirks. Also great: "Mirror, Mirror" turned it around, such that imposter Kirk was the good guy, and evil Spock figures it out with no recourse to a stupid spell.

 

[Timo]

I have little trouble imaging that Kirk would have forgotten all about the shared time on Exo III, and that Chapel would be painfully aware of this...

"Whom Gods Destroy" is the most excusable of the lot IMHO. Figuring out who is who doesn't matter much: everybody knows what course of action the bad guy would wish to pursue (anything that leads to folks beaming up from the asylum), so when one of the Kirks tries that, the game is over. A bit of preliminary bickering can proceed with no harm done, then.

The one way to save "Turnabout Intruder" would be to establish that the alien switcharoo machine does more, or less, than just swap bodies/minds 100%. If a bit of Lester were to be inserted into Kirk along with her body, and a bit of Kirk into Lester, the lithmus tests on identity would fail, and both the testees would be motivated to try and dodge the tests somehow, feeling conflicted and unsure about themselves. The same if the transfer left the minds confused and lacking.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Henoch]

I expected more from the "crucial" Robbiani dermal-optic test. <Sigh.>